Naveen Kasturia (born 26 January 1985) is an Indian actor known for his work in TVF drama series TVF Pitchers and Aspirants. He also appeared in lead actor in the critically acclaimed film Sulemani Keeda. He received critical acclaim and immense fame for his role of Abhilash in TVF Aspirants.

He started his career working as an assistant director on the film Jashnn and then assisted Dibakar Banerjee on Love Sex Aur Dhokha and Shanghai. He also appeared in Bose: Dead/Alive and played leading roles in Waah Zindagi, Thinkistan, Happily Ever After and Runaway Lugai.

Early life

Naveen was born in Otukpo, a small town in Nigeria. Though his family moved back to India when he was a year old. He was brought up in a joint family in Delhi. He did his schooling from Birla Vidya Niketan and engineering from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (now NSUT) in Delhi.[citation needed]

He directed a lot of skits/plays in his school and college days. After graduation, he joined an analytics firm called Inductis in Gurgaon in 2006, where he worked for two years before moving to Mumbai in 2008. In Mumbai, he worked with JP Morgan Chase for a very brief period of time before making a final switch to films.

Career

Naveen continued doing theatre after engineering. In 2007, Naveen and his college friends started a theatre company, Right Click Entertainment, and wrote and directed his first ticketed play Khel Khel Mein, which went housefull. He worked as an assistant director in Jashnn, produced by Vishesh Films.

Naveen got his first television commercial when he went to meet Dibakar Banerjee since he wanted to assist Dibakar Banerjee as an AD, and Banerjee asked him to work in his coke commercial. As of now, Naveen Kasturia has worked in many advertisements for various brands such as Vodafone, Mahindra, Tapzo app, Marathe Jewellers, True Value and so on. Later, he assisted Dibakar Banerjee in LSD and Shanghai, and Oscar-winning director Danis Tanović in an international film called Tigers.[citation needed]

In 2011, Amit Masurkar offered a movie to Kasturia, named Sulemani Keeda. Released in 2014, the movie proved to be a turning point in his career. Naveen did a few more sketches with The Viral Fever before Pitchers happened.

In 2022, he also appeared in a podcast on Spotify, 'Bhaskar Bose: A Hindi Thriller Podcast' (season 3 – 'Bhaskar Bose in a Perfect World' ) playing the role of Bhaskar Bose from a Parallel World. The podcast was created by MNM Talkies.

Facts

• Naveen Kasturia is an Indian actor, who has also worked as an assistant director in a few Hindi films.
• He was born in Nigeria, and a year after his birth, his family moved to Delhi from Nigeria.
• He loves watching films since childhood. During an interview, he shared that as a kid, he used to enjoy watching Hindi films and dancing to Bollywood songs. He said that while he was in class 2 or 3, he danced to the song “Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai” from the Hindi film ‘Khal Nayak’ (1993), at the India Gate, Delhi.
• While he was in college, he used to write theatre plays and also used to act in the plays. His play ‘Lo Kr Lo Ji Baat’ became very popular during his college days.
• In 2006, he joined a private company Inductis, Gurgaon, as a finance analyst. After working there for almost two years, he joined the financial services company, J.P. Morgan Chase, in Mumbai. During an interview, he shared that while doing his job, he wanted to move to Mumbai to work in Hindi films.
• However, it was his father’s instruction that he must have a stable job in Mumbai before shifting there. After reaching Mumbai, he worked at J.P. Morgan Chase for a few months and later, quit his job.
• In 2007, Naveen started a theatre group named ‘Right Click Entertainment’ along with a few of his college friends.
• While he was employed at J. P. Morgan in Mumbai, one of his friends gave him the contact numbers of a few production houses in Mumbai. He then started visiting various production houses and got a job as assistant-to-assistant director at Vishesh Films.
• Naveen worked as an assistant director in the Hindi films ‘Love Sex Aur Dhokha’ (2010), ‘Shanghai’ (2012), and ‘Tigers’ (2014).

Filmography

Films

Web series